Two months after the death of Helen Thomas, another woman who broke important barriers in Washington's press corps has passed away.

Lee Thornton, the first African-American woman to cover the White House for a major news network (CBS) and the first black host of All Things Considered, died last Wednesday. The University of Maryland, where Thornton was a professor and former interim dean of the journalism school, reports she was 71.

-- 1997. Joins the faculty at Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

-- 2008-09. Is the journalism school's interim dean.

-- 2011. Now retired, she returns to be Maryland's interim associate provost for equity and diversity and is named the university's "woman of the year."

Lucy Dalglish, dean of the Merrill College, says of Thornton that she "was a journalism and communications scholar. She was a broadcast journalist. She excelled at both. And she could move back and forth in those fields seamlessly and be spectacularly good at both things."